What's In a Color? The Basics About Image Recognition Color Extraction

Image recognition is bringing revolutionary changes to the ways in which we consume and process information online. Deeply integrated into web pages and apps, it allows us to make sense of visual data in small and large quantities alike as we’ve never been able to do before.

The applications of image recognition are diverse and empowering. Color extraction is one of the most significant and game-changing capabilities offered by computer vision. The possibility to identify and analyze the colors in images gives numerous possibilities to businesses to better use their visual libraries, monetize them, and even increase sales of in-store products.

How does color extraction through image recognition work? The color API enables analysis of visuals in terms of the colors they contain. It determines the five most prominent colors that are present in an image. Then they can be exported as hex code, RGB triple, specific color name, and parent color name. This makes them easy to use for, say, keyword tagging and categorization.

Let’s delve into the capabilities of color extraction and how you can put it to use for your business.

What does color extraction offer?

The color extraction technology enabled by image recognition has a diverse business and user applications. But how does it make the online experience better?

Color extraction from images allows for keyword tagging of visuals by color. This makes it possible to easily navigate large databases containing visuals. As color differentiation is essential for categorizing images, it allows for searching and browsing based on color tagging.

Multi-color search is a typical part of color extraction technologies as well. Through using it, you can conduct more complicated search of colors. This means you can identify complex objects that contain more than one dominant color. It also enables multi-color filtering of image search in databases and websites hosted in a color palette functionality.

With powerful color extraction APIs, you can also identify the colors in the foreground and background of an image. In this way, you can remove the background if needed, or unnecessary elements from the foreground. This allows for more flexibility, so you can focus only on the objects on the image, or on the setting behind them.

How can you use color extraction in your business?

Let’s consider how an e-commerce website selling clothes can benefit from color extraction. The color API can analyze the photos of all garments and provide the five predominant colors for each item. The color keywords are then attributed to the product.

When a buyer is searching in the online store for, say, rocker jeans in black, they can just filter the products on the website by the color of their preference. With Imagga’s color API, the user can even type in the exact name of the color they’re looking for. This is especially useful for color blind people, as the color extraction would allow for differentiation of shades and nuances that they would not be able to make otherwise.

Take virtual wedding planners as another example for the commercial uses of color extraction. By using a coloring API, they can offer automated color analysis for couples who want to decide on their wedding color palette. It would allow for uploading a photo with the color preferences of the client. On the basis of its analysis, the color extraction tool would offer similar color combinations.

Another great use of color extraction is suited for image-based platforms such as Pinterest. If multi-color search is integrated with fashion and design inspiration websites and apps, this would allow users to conduct a color search of immensely large visual databases. They would be able to create groups of images and albums categorized by colors. Besides significantly improving the user experience, this feature can also be monetized by businesses. The color search and categorization can be used by a wide variety of platforms such as design, photography, painting, interior design, and more.

Learn how you can integrate color extraction with ease

Integrating color extraction in your website or app doesn’t need to be complicated. Imagga’s color extraction API is offered as a service. You don’t have to install anything. You just send HTTP requests to our servers in the cloud and get thousands of images processed in a matter of hours.

What are your top examples of using online color extraction? We’d love to hear about your creative approach in the comments below.